Tannenhof Schwarzwalder Landjager

Landjager is a traditional semi-dry sausage product reminiscent of jerky sticks, but more natural. My wife brought home this package:

20150806_071119

Here’s what I found on Tannenhof: they seem to be a purveyor of cured meats. Their products look tasty. Schwarzwalder seems to be a type of landjager, since I see other brands using the moniker, but it seems that all landjager are made of roughly equal amounts of pork, beef and lard.

“Savory snack” is written beneath the word landjager. I think you can guess that the green emblem says “traditional specialty” and “guaranteed quality,” since English is a Germanic language and all that nonsense… Anyway here’s what they look like – there were actually two pair of links in the package:

20150806_071151

The sausages themselves are very smoky in flavor. They’re somewhat hard like a pepperoni in texture, but not as spiced. They seem to be real sausages and not some mashed up conglomerate like a Slim Jim, though I suppose anyone can mold them to look like real sausages. Take a look at the cross-section and decide for yourself.

20150806_071205

The smell is reminiscent of raw hide dog treats. They taste okay – no added flavors other than smoke and whatever spices were used in the initial sausage making, but it was tough for me to get beyond that dog snack smell, having had German Shepherds all my life and giving them snacks that smelled exactly like this. If I can’t snack on them, they might be good to cook with as a smoky flavor enhancer in something like split pea soup.

One last thing: Don’t hassle the Tannenhof.